Trotted off to the dentist yesterday for my rescheduled check up, only to find the practice closed with a notice in the window saying, ‘We moved on 3rd February to…’ and then the new address. Well, thanks for telling me THAT, I thought. However, because I am a responsible person and I hate being late for anything, I had an extra fifteen minutes spare before my appointment started and the new address was only a brisk five minute walk away, so I still arrived ahead of time. Listening to the receptionists talking, it sounds like a lot of patients have pitched up at the old practice building which suggests to me that the texts they said they sent detailing the new practice information either a) didn’t arrive or b) were never sent in the first place.
Ah well. My dentist was running behind with his schedule anyway, so it didn’t really matter.
His opening gambit as I settled into the chair was, ‘What brings you here today?’
What was THAT supposed to mean? Didn’t he know he was a dentist? Didn’t he know that people attend a dentist in order to receive dental treatment and not, for example, to discuss a behavioural problem with their pet llama or sign up for a new broadband ‘n’ TV package. What did he MEAN by ‘what brings you here today?’
Although the urge was great, I thought I’d better not arse about with witty sarcasm. ‘I’ve come for a check up,’ I said. ‘And I’ve also got a broken filling on my very back tooth.’
‘What do you think of the new practice?’ said the dentist, twanging on some latex gloves. ‘It’s right next door to the pub. We get these amazing food smells all day. I love food. I’m obsessed by food, aren’t I?’ he continued, addressing his question to his dental nurse.
‘He is,’ confirmed the dental nurse. ‘Talks about it all day.’ She seemed weary.
By now, I was lying back with my mouth wide open in the hope he’d get the hint and crack on with the job in hand. After all, my parking ticket would last only two and a half hours.
He poked about with the broken filling. ‘Would you like this repaired now?’ said he. ‘ I can do it now if you like.’
‘Ess peeze,’ said I, because I’m getting pretty good at seizing opportunities as they are presented and it would save me having to make another appointment which would probably be cancelled because it clashed with his next holiday.
‘Would you like an anaesthetic?’ said the dentist. ‘You won’t really need one as it’s a repair, but I’d prefer it if you did have one.’
‘If ats ot ooo ont, ess,’ I said. And then the dentist removed his pokey stick probe thing and his dinky mirror thing from my mouth so I could speak properly. ‘Numb me up,’ I confirmed.
Reader, he gave me enough anaesthetic to numb a whole horse! Sheesh, by the time he’d conducted my check up - ‘You floss, don’t you? I can always tell if people floss’ - and I’d spent 20 minutes hanging almost upside down and trying to meditate my way through this filling repair, I was feeling pretty woozy.
And I felt even more woozy when I came to pay the bill. £160! ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY CHUFFING POUNDS!!! For a check up and a filling repair. I mean, I know they’ve got a sparkly new dental practice to pay for but even so…
The receptionist attempted to book me in for another check up in six months’ time. I declined and said a year would do, thank you very much, because my dental checkups have always been one year apart which suits me just fine.
I sat in my car for a while before I drove home, on account of the wooziness. And when I got home, I wafted around feeling woozy before settling down to feel woozy on the sofa with a cup of tea, some of which ended up on my jumper on account of the horse-dose of local anaesthetic. But two hours later I was feeling much better, and after three hours I was back to normal human functioning, and had some peanut butter on toast for a late lunch.
My brother has just emerged from hospital after having an operation. He is intending to go to the supermarket tomorrow and run the barcode of his surgery wristband over a checkout machine to see how much he costs. Hilarious!
Comments